Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" "Does he collect butterflies?". They ask: "How old is he?" "How many brothers does he have?" "How much does he weigh?" "How much money does his father make?" Only then do they think they know him.
---Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Happiness

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote these rules to help people live happier more productive lives. They seem like a lot of common sense to me, which is nice to see from a century ago.

1. Make up your mind to be happy - learn to ﬁnd pleasure in simple things.2. Make the most of circumstances. No one has everything and everyone has something of sorrow.3. Don’t take yourself too seriously.4. Don’t let criticism worry you - you can’t please everyone.5. Don’t let your neighbors set your standards - be yourself.6. Do things you enjoy doing, but stay out of debt.7. Don’t borrow trouble. Imaginary things are harder to bear than actual ones.8. Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish enmities and grudges. Avoid people who make you unhappy.9. Have many interests. If you can’t travel, read about places.10. Don’t hold postmortems or spend time brooding over sorrows and mistakes.11. Don’t be the one who never gets over things.12. Keep busy at something. A busy person never has time to be unhappy

I realize that the pursuit of happiness is a rather shallow goal compared to searching after peace and hope and joy, but it's nice too.

1 comment:

Owen recommends hitting Cmd-A then Cmd-C (or Ctrl-A then Ctrl-C on Windows) to copy your comment to the clipboard before you hit "Submit". That way, if your comment doesn't post for whatever reason, you can paste it back into the comment field with Cmd-V (or Ctrl-V) and try again.